Advice on doing my own hay

[farmall 55a case]

How much hay do you do

 

[elginfarm]

Guys,
I can't thak you enough for all your replies and suggestions. I am taking notes and doing research on your suggested equipment. Fortunately I live on the property I will be baling, but now I have to also worry about storing the hay.
Thanks again,
Eldon

 

[whitmerlegacyfarm]

How much hay do you do

Farmall, were you asking me how much hay i do? or elginfarm? Sorry wasn't sure

 

[farmall 55a case]

I was asking you! Seems like you have a lot of hay equipment.

 

[haywire cattle co]

we startd doing our own hay a couple years ago on a tite budget.we started with a new holland 489 for 1000$ i spent another couple hundred on some knives guards and a roller chain.we bought a hesston 530 round baler for 3700$ i only spent another 50$ to replace a few pick-up teeth.we found a kuhn grs25 rake tedder combo for 700$ and that needed nothing.so we got all set up ready to go for a little under 6000$.that little hesston round baler works fine on my 48 horse kubota i think a smaller tractor would run it fine.the haybine doesnt require much power but has a lot of toung weight for a compact tractor.I am hopeing in another year or so to upgrade the haybine to some kind of small disk or drum mower that would let me cover ground a little faster.we usualy put up around 400 round bales in 2 or sometimes 3 cuttings on 35 to 40 acres.the acreage varies because we rotate cattle pasture into our hay ground.

 

[whitmerlegacyfarm]

I was asking you! Seems like you have a lot of hay equipment.

Pretty much 2 of everything, just so happened i found some good deals and couldn't pass um up. So my thoughts are now, if i can find a small farm around i could take the older spare equipment and let there to make hay with rather then travel back and forth with it. I'm only haying about 10ac lol so don't make fun now. I bought a lot of the stuff with intentions to help my neighbor out on his 20ac hay fields cause he was taking them over from my dairy farm that leased it in the past. Needless to say he borrowed a lot of stuff and i didn't really help him as much as i thought we were going to do, but that's what friends/neighbors are for i guess. He allowed me to come down and do a 2nd cut on his fields and keep all the hay from it so i guess it was pretty fair deal.

 

[tessiers]

Kind of late in this post but here goes. We do 25 acres of hay, mostly other peoples land. We do not pay for use of the land, in this area there are a lot of people with 2 to 10 acres that are happy to find someone to keep it mowed down for the hay. We the following equipment. Made a little over 2000 bales last year, and sold enough to cover fuel twine and repairs for the year. We use about 1200 to 1500 bales a year ourselves.

1941 Farmall H with 7' JD #5 sickle mower. Traded a rifle for the tractor, it does need rear tires, looking at $800 for that, otherwise works good. Gave $500 for the mower and have put very little into it.

1953 Ford NAA. Paid $1000, put another $500 into it. A finer tedding and raking tractor was never made, but too high geared for comfortable baling, although I did it for 3 years.

1970 Massey Fergusen 135 Diesel. Gave $3000 for it and was my wife mad, but. With live PTO and 2 gear ranges this is a nice small scale hay tractor.

Tontutti 4 basket tedder. Should have been $2500, I traded some work for it. We did hay for several years without a tedder but I consider it necisary for good hay, at least in my region.

International #14 4 bar rake. Paid $400 and put another $100 into teeth. Works real well.

New Holland #67 Baler. Paid $100 for scrap, put another $700 into it. It is a nice baler and does a great job but I have a lot of time tied up in it and I wish I had spent a little more $ for a good baler.

3 old hay wagon frames hauled out of a field. No cost but a lot of welding and fabricating with scrap material so no real cost but a lot of time. As it is I do not use them much. I prefer to haul hay on my equipment trailer and 1 ton. Our fields are several miles away and It is much faster to load onto a real trailer and drive 50 home than haul wagons around.

I also have a New Holland 33 crop chopper and a forage wagon, and up until snow flies I chop grass and feed it, that saves a lot of time drying and baleing for no reason.

Hay conveyor is pretty important to us, I paid $300 for mine

John Deere ground drive manure spreader. We paid $500

I am fairly handy around the shop and I like to buy equipment. I like to buy stuff around scrap price, fix it up. If it turns out better than what I have I keep it and use it, otherwise I sell it. All told we have made 5000+ bales with about $6300 in equipment, just for hay. I consider this pretty good and all of the equipment is ready for another 2000 bales this year. Thats cheap hay any way you look at it. Even more important to me is I find it very rewarding to make our own hay. I love the feeling of knowing I provided for my animals. We have made good hay, and bad. I learned a lot more from the bad hay than the good. I think it builds character as well.

 

[GREENBOY]

Hello all - a little advise on a hay turner.

I have recently purchased a DEUTZ-FAHR KU25 hay turner and I have been looking for an operators manual to get me up and running ahead of the hay season. I have a MF135 which I will be running the turner on.

Incase I dont manage to find one before I need to use it - can anyone direct me to some info on hay turner and some brief setup guides and the do's and donts of using this piece of equipment
View attachment KU25.bmp
Many thanks

 

[jimmysisson]

You might get better response if you start your own thread, so your title shows.
Jim